Hidden Warships: Find World War II's Abandoned, Sunk, and Preserved Warships

By Nicholas A. Veronico

A photo-filled tour of wrecked warships around the world, with their stories recounted in “a wonderfully clear [and] lively style” (Seattle Post Intelligencer).

Sunk by enemy fire, scuttled, or run aground, the number of World War II-era battleships, cruisers, submarines, and other warships that ended their service on the bottom of the world’s oceans and seas is enormous. In the decades since the conflict, wreck hunters have pored over historical records and combed the world’s oceans to find their remains. Now you too can see them up close—without getting your feet wet.

In Hidden Warships, naval historian Nicholas A. Veronico details the history, recovery, and preservation of these sunken combat ships—including accounts from the divers and restorers who have worked with them. Beginning with the Japanese midget submarines that attacked Pearl Harbor and continuing into the modern era, including the 2006 sinking of the postwar aircraft carrier USS Oriskany, Veronico provides rich detail on each noteworthy vessel, including over 150 photographs, ship specifications, geographic coordinates, and more. For the enthusiast who wants an even more complete experience, the book concludes with a list of preserved ships, an Internet resource guide, and a suggested reading list to continue the exploration.

Whether you plan on visiting these historic sites yourself or simply enjoy their compelling stories, Hidden Warships will guide you, above the surface and underwater, through some of the most famous relics of World War II naval warfare.

“A tantalizing selection of sunken vessels, including many recent discoveries.” —Naval History Magazine

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781627886642

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

MUCH OF WORLD WAR II’S NAVAL HISTORY LIVES ON AS HIDDEN WARSHIPS

In the years leading up to and during World War II, the Allied and Axis powers built more than 120,000 ships—ships of all sizes. During the conflict thousands of vessels were sunk, and after the war many more were scrapped or converted to perform new tasks.

The estimate of ships on the bottom of the world’s oceans is staggering. US Navy combatants of all sizes, from water barges (classified as YW) to battleships (BB) to fleet aircraft carriers (CV), are counted at more than 1,875 vessels. The Allies sank 766 German submarines during the war, and Nazi U-boats in turn sent more than 2,775 Allied ships to the bottom. In the Pacific, the Allies sank 3,032 Japanese vessels, which displaced more than 10.5 million tons combined. The typical Japanese freighter, equivalent in size to an American Liberty ship, was 444 feet long with a beam of 58 feet and displaced seven thousand tons.

On the other end of the scale, America’s largest combatant ships of World War II, Iowa class of battleships, displaced forty-five thousand tons and were 887 feet 3 inches long with a beam of 108 feet 2 inches. In contrast, Japan’s super battleship Yamato displaced sixty-four thousand tons with an overall length of 862 feet 10 inches and a beam of 127 feet 7 inches. The Japanese lost all eight of their prewar battleships, and the two sister ships constructed during World War II, Musashi and Yamato, were sent to the bottom by Allied aircraft in 1944 and 1945, respectively.

In addition to the ship losses by the navies of the world, the United States put more than eighteen thousand vessels up for disposal as surplus after the war. These former combatants were given a new lease on life serving in a variety of civilian roles, from salvage tugs to transports to freighters moving goods for the new global economy that emerged after the war. Eventually, most were removed from service, many were scrapped, and some were hidden away, while others ended up on the bottom for one reason or another.

These vessels of war became today’s hidden warships.

THE IMPACT OF TIME AND TECHNOLOGY ON WRECK DIVING

The ocean gives up its secrets only when it is ready. Yet the evolution of technology has enabled explorers to discover the ocean’s secrets by hunting for, finding, and in some cases recovering a bounty of ships and treasure.

The digital revolution that began in the late 1970s changed sonar technology and camera miniaturization, and by the end of the twentieth century it made possible the use of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) by sophisticated search and dive teams. In 2015, an advanced side-scan sonar can now be purchased for less than $10,000. When an interesting target is found, an equally advanced ROV, equipped with digital low-light still and video cameras, can be dropped over the side to investigate a contact. These technologies have greatly reduced the cost of shipwreck investigation and at the same time increased safety by eliminating the need to send divers down to investigate each and every contact. After investigating a target, how fast an ROV can be pulled up is only limited by the speed of the winch as opposed to the potential hazards of recovering a dive team, in which any number of factors can go wrong during ascent and decompression.

Beginning in 1969, Jacques Cousteau and his crew brought the realities of war into homes around the world through their explorations of Truk Lagoon and other former battlefields in the Pacific Ocean. Cousteau’s 1971 TV special Lagoon of Lost Ships showed eerie scenes of gas masks and skulls inside sunken Japanese ships, contrasted with coral-encrusted cannon lit by the sun’s rays beaming through crystal-clear water. Images of trucks and tanks on ship decks, holds with stacks of ammunition, and the crews’ quarters with dinnerware scattered around the mess brought a wave of scuba diving tourists to Micronesia.

Jarvis (DD-393) is one of the 32 Allied and 14 Japanese ships resting deep at the bottom of the Sealark Channel. She was sunk on August 9, 1942, with the loss of all 233 on board, the only US Navy surface warship to go down without any survivors. Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum

Two decades later, undersea explorer Robert Ballard brought a number of World War II sea battles back to life. Ballard discovered the wreck of the German battleship Bismarck in 1989. The Nazi battleship was remarkably preserved, having come to rest 15,700 feet below the Atlantic Ocean, approximately 475 miles west of the French port of Brest. An exploration of this magnitude had not been possible until side-scan sonar and ROV technology matured. At this point, however, both technologies were still extremely resource intensive in terms of cost, support staff, and equipment.

Turning his attention to the Pacific theater, Ballard in 1992 began focusing his research on the World War II naval engagements in the Solomon Islands. In addition to side-scan sonar and ROVs, Ballard’s team also brought a three-person deep-diving submersible, Sea Cliff. The mini sub enabled close-up inspection of the wrecks and presented Ballard with the opportunity to take survivors of the battle down to see their former ships.

Ballard’s team located the Australian heavy cruiser HMAS Canberra, which was pulverized in the opening minutes of the Battle of Savo Island (August 9, 1942). The heavy cruiser took twenty-four hits from Japanese guns, which immobilized it; after the battle, Canberra was abandoned and sunk by torpedoes from the destroyer USS Ellet (DD-398). As the battle raged, USS Quincy (CA-39) was mauled by Japanese gunfire and struck by a pair of torpedoes from the cruiser Tenryū. Quincy sank less than thirty minutes after the engagement began.

Ballard’s expedition also located the American destroyers Barton (DD-599), Laffey (DD-459), and Monssen (DD-436), as well as the Japanese destroyer Yūdachi, which were all sunk during the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal (November 1942). During that same engagement, the US battleship Washington (BB-56) hurled shells from its sixteen-inch guns into the Japanese battleship Kirishima, which capsized and sank on the morning of November 15, 1942. Also sent to the bottom on November 15 was the Japanese destroyer Ayanami. Ballard located this ship 2,700 feet below the surface in two sections, apparently blown in two by an American torpedo that hit aft of the bridge.

A burning oil tanker sinks off the US East Coast, a victim of a German U-boat’s torpedoes. During World War II, German submarines sank 2,775 ships. Library of Congress

Chicago (CA-29) is seen steaming in San Francisco Bay as she approaches Alcatraz Island. She had been damaged by a Japanese torpedo at the Battle of Savo Island on August 9, 1942, and was lost south of Guadalcanal and San Cristobal Islands on January 30, 1943, at the Battle of Rennell Island. US Navy

Other ships resting in waters of the Solomon Islands include the American destroyers De Haven (DD-469), Jarvis (DD-393), and Aaron Ward (DD-483); cruisers Chicago (CA-29) and Juneau (CL-52); and the Japanese battleship Hiei and cruiser Kinugasa. In all, more than fifty ships were sent to the bottom during naval engagements in the area.

Fifty-six years after the June 4, 1942, sea battle around Midway Atoll, Ballard presented photos of USS Yorktown (CV-5) to the general public. The carrier is sitting nearly three miles below the ocean’s surface with a 25° list to starboard. Both of the holes in Yorktown’s port side, made by torpedo hits from aircraft flying from the Japanese carrier Hiryū, were photographed by Ballard’s team. Ballard’s discoveries were turned into books and TV documentaries for the National Geographic Society, all consumed by a public extremely interested in World War II history.

Simultaneous to Ballard’s expeditions in the Pacific Ocean, divers aboard Bill Nagle’s boat Seeker discovered a submarine off the coast of New Jersey. Dropping down from Seeker were divers John Chatterton, Richie Kohler, and Kevin Brennan, who subsequently spent years trying to determine the German submarine’s identity. Located 240 feet down, they repeatedly penetrated the wreck at great risk to themselves and eventually determined the sub’s identity to be U-869. Many contested their findings, as it was thought that U-869 had been lost off the coast of Africa. The U-boat’s discovery, the subsequent attempts to determine its identity, and the deaths of three divers were profiled in Robert Kurson’s best-selling book Shadow Divers. Chatterton and Kohler used their experience with U-869 to develop the History Channel TV show Deep Sea Detectives, which ran for three seasons.

Wreck diving also preserved a president’s reputation. During the 1992 presidential election, it was alleged that on July 25, 1944, young Ensign George H. W. Bush had attacked an unarmed ship and strafed Japanese seamen in a lifeboat. There was photographic evidence that Bush had dropped a five-hundred-pound bomb on the stern of an armed Japanese trawler, but for the political pundits, the photo and Bush’s words were not enough.

As the George Bush war criminal story was about to break, divers Dan Bailey, Dave Buller, Pam and Chip Lambert, and Pat Scannon were en route to Palau, Micronesia. After searching Kayangel Atoll, the reported scene of the alleged war crimes, the team quickly determined it was not deep enough to host ships, nor would it hold the wreck of a warship. Studying maps of local atolls, the team dived at nearby Ngeruangel Atoll, where they located Ensign Bush’s target in seventy feet of water. Finding thousands of rounds of machine-gun ammunition as well as seventy-five-millimeter cannon shells on deck, the team videotaped the evidence that Bush had indeed attacked a Japanese combatant. Footage of the wreck put an end to the allegations.

From this trip, Pat Scannon went on to found the Bent Prop Project, a self-funded team dedicated to repatriating every American service member who has not come home from the World War II battles within the Palau Islands. Scannon and his group of volunteers have done tremendous work, discovering many of the missing from battles in this hotly contested archipelago.

These high-profile shipwreck explorations spanning more than three decades inspired the new millennium’s generation of wreck-diving explorers. Each has given a tremendous boost to the general public’s interest in World War II shipwrecks and wreck diving as a sport.

ON ETERNAL PATROL

During World War II, the United States lost fifty-two submarines, many of their locations unknown. In the past decade, half a dozen submarines that were once lost have been found, bringing closure to the crews’ families and a final accounting for the missing submarines.

Video still from June 16, 2006, showing the plaque placed on the aft capstan of the World War II submarine Lagarto (SS-371), sunk in the Gulf of Thailand. Divers from USS Salvor (ARS-52) conducted six days of diving to positively identify Lagarto as part of the Thailand phase of the exercise Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training, or CARAT. CARAT is an annual maritime training exercise involving the United States and six Southeast Asia nations designed to enhance the operational readiness of the participating forces. Senior Chief Navy Diver Michael Moser/US Navy

On May 18, 2005, USS Lagarto (SS-371) was found in the Gulf of Thailand by divers Jamie Macleod and Stewart Oehl operating from the dive boat Trident. During May 3 and 4, 1945, Lagarto and USS Baya (SS-318) were tracking a Japanese convoy in the Gulf of Siam (today’s Gulf of Thailand); convoy escorts harassed Baya to the point where the submarine broke contact, but Lagarto was never heard from again. The Japanese minelayer Hatsutaka had dropped depth charges on an unidentified submarine on May 4, with no results, and as it turns out, radar-equipped Hatsutaka had caught Lagarto and sent her to the bottom with all hands. The wreck lies 280 feet below the surface (at 7°55' N, 102°00' E), and divers have reported that one of her torpedo-tube doors is open and the tube empty. Lagarto did not go down without a fight.

The following year, 2006, saw the identities of a pair of once-missing submarines confirmed by the US Navy while a third submarine was located in the Java Sea. In July, Russian divers confirmed a sea-bottom anomaly to be the missing Gato-class submarine USS Wahoo (SS-238), which was skippered by Cmdr. Dudley Walker Mush Morton. During his four patrols onboard Wahoo, Morton and crew sank nineteen enemy ships totaling more than fifty-four thousand tons.

Wahoo’s final resting place and the grave of its eighty-man crew were located in the La Pérouse Strait between Japan’s Hokkaido and Russia’s Sakhalin Island, 213 feet below the surface. Finding Wahoo was an international collaboration led by the Wahoo Project Group—headed by Bryan MacKinnon, Morton’s grand-nephew—the Sakhalin Energy Investment Corporation, Russian authorities, the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force, and the USS Bowfin Museum in Pearl Harbor, which consulted on the project. When Wahoo was discovered, the Russians were actually looking for their lost submarine L-19, which is believed to have been sunk by Japanese mines in the same area. On October 31, 2006, the US Navy confirmed that the submarine located in La Pérouse Strait was in fact Wahoo.

The forward capstan of the submarine Lagarto (SS 371), one of four missing US Navy submarines located and positively identified in 2006 and 2007. Chief Diver Jon Sommers/US Navy

In August, a location effort headed by the sons of Lt. Cmdr. Mannert L. Jim Abele, commanding officer of USS Grunion, proved fruitful. Grunion had been lost in early August 1942 near Kiska in the Aleutian Island chain. Photos from the expedition’s ROV answered the questions as to why the submarine went down and verified its identity. (See the chapter on USS Grunion, page 154.)

At the end of 2006, on November 23, USS Perch (SS-176) was discovered in waters near Surabaya, Java. The submarine was found using sonar aboard the dive boat Empress, owned by diver Vidar Skoglie. Kevin Denlay, Dieter Kops, Mike Gadd, and Craig Challen dived with Skoglie to the wreck. They located a plaque on the sub’s hull confirming its identity. Perch was found in 190 feet of water, and it had been scuttled by its crew on March 3, 1942, after being heavily damaged by Japanese depth charges. The entire crew of five officers and fifty-four sailors survived the sinking, only to be interned for the duration of the war in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps. Six men subsequently died in Japanese captivity.

Wahoo (SS-238) departs Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California, on July 14, 1943, prior to the World War II submarine’s sixth patrol. On October 11, 1943, nearly a month into Wahoo’s seventh patrol, a multi-hour combined sea and air attack involving depth charges and aerial bombs sunk the Gato-class submarine. Naval Historical Center

Underwater view of Wahoo’s deck gun. The submarine was located 213 feet below the surface of La Pérouse Strait in July 2006. Vladimir Kartashev/USS Bowfin Submarine Museum and Park

Three years after the spate of submarine discoveries, USS Flier (SS-250) was located in spring 2009 in the Balabac Strait, which separates Balabac Island from the northern tip of Borneo. Departing for her second war patrol from Fremantle, Australia, Flier made contact with an underwater mine on August 13, 1944. The submarine went down fast with only fourteen of the crew escaping. Of those fourteen, six perished during the long swim to a nearby island.

Flier was found by the crew of YAP Films, which was filming the documentary show Dive Detectives, hosted by father-and-son divers Mike and Warren Fletcher. When the submarine’s identity was confirmed by the US Naval History and Heritage Command, Warren Fletcher said, "The Flier discovery presented Dive Detectives with one of our most challenging dives. At a depth of three hundred and thirty feet there is little margin for error. As my father and I descended into the dark blue water, the unmistakable shape of a Gato-class submarine came into view. That moment made all of the hard work and danger pale in comparison with the feeling of pride it gave me to know that Flier and her crew will not be forgotten."

On June 12, 1943, the training submarine USS R-12 (SS-89) was lost in waters off Key West, Florida. The forward battery compartment of the 186-foot-long submarine began leaking, and the leak could not be stopped; as flooding accelerated, the order was given to blow the main ballast tanks to keep the submarine afloat. Unfortunately, the effort failed and the weight of the water took the boat down, forever entombing forty of its crew and two Brazilian Navy officers. Two officers and three sailors were swept overboard when the submarine went down, surviving to be rescued from the sea hours later.

Project leader Tim Taylor, Christine Dennison, and the crew aboard the research vessel Tiburon obtained a permit to search for the submarine from the US Naval History and Heritage Command and began looking for R-12 in fall 2010. On October 10, 2010, the submarine was located in six hundred feet of water. In 2012, Taylor and Tiburon crew photographed and mapped the vessel’s condition. Another World War II submarine’s final resting place was logged, and another lost crew would not be forgotten.

SS Gairsoppa left Calcutta, India, in December 1940, with a load of silver bound for the United Kingdom. In early February 1941, the steamer was torpedoed by U-101 as she approached Galway, Ireland. Eighty-four men perished in the attack, with the lone survivor spending almost two weeks in a lifeboat before being rescued. Library of Contemporary History, Stuttgart

WORLD WAR II’S TREASURE SHIPS

The first of the large-haul treasure ships from World War II was the recovery of $105.2 million* (£65.9 million) in gold bars from the bomb room of the British cruiser HMS Edinburgh. At the time of Edinburgh’s sinking, the gold was being transferred to the United Kingdom to pay for shipments to keep the Russian populace supplied with food and its military with ammunition.

The cruiser had been escorting convoy QP-11, sailing from Murmansk, Russia, bound for the United Kingdom on April 28, 1942. Two days later, Kapitänleutnant Max-Martin Teichert, commander of U-456, fired a torpedo that struck Edinburgh on the starboard side. The ship listed immediately. Damage-control crews were able to isolate the flooding, but while they tried to return Edinburgh to an even keel, U-456 sent another torpedo that literally blew off the cruiser’s stern.

Edinburgh was taken in tow by destroyers HMS Foresight and HMS Forester, which pulled the convoy’s stricken flagship back to Murmansk. Escorted by four minesweepers, the slowly moving tow was constantly harassed by Nazi torpedo bombers. Nearing Bear Island on May 2, Edinburgh was fired upon by three German destroyers. Foresight and Forester cast off their tow to pursue the attackers. Edinburgh, its damaged steering forcing it to sail in circles, scored hits on destroyer Hermann Schoemann (Z7), damaging it to the point that its crew scuttled her. Foresight and Forester were successful at driving off the two remaining destroyers, but not before a torpedo was fired at them. The torpedo missed, but it continued into the side of Edinburgh exactly opposite its first torpedo hole. The cruiser, now fatally wounded, had its crew removed by minesweepers HMS Gossamer and HMS Harrier. After gunfire from the minesweepers failed to send Edinburgh to the bottom, a torpedo from Foresight sank her.

Odyssey Marine Exploration was awarded the contract to salvage the wreck of Gairsoppa. This view of the ship’s deck is from the underwater archaeological survey used to determine the wreck’s identity. Odyssey Marine Exploration

An ROV manipulator arm lifts a bar of silver from a stack inside Gairsoppa. The recovery effort spanned multiple seasons and the Odyssey Marine Exploration team recovered more than 100 tons of silver; the salvors were awarded 80 percent of the recovered treasure. Odyssey Marine Exploration

Nine years after the end of World War II, in 1954, the British government put the cargo onboard Edinburgh out for salvage, but deteriorating relations between the British and the Soviet Union during the Cold War canceled that salvage effort. Nearly three decades later, in the early 1980s, diver Keith Jessop put together a consortium to recover Edinburgh’s gold. The ship was found in the Barents Sea more than eight hundred feet below the surface. On September 16, 1981, diver John Rossier loaded a twenty-eight-pound ingot, the first of 431 gold bars to be recovered, into a metal basket that was hauled to the surface. In 1986, salvage crews returned to the wreck and an additional twenty-nine bars were recovered. This brought the total to 460. Compared to the manifest, only five bars were unrecovered and unaccounted for.

On August 28, 1944, another treasure ship laden with silver was sent to the bottom. The SS John Barry was an EC2-S-C1 Liberty ship built at Kaiser’s Portland, Oregon, shipyard and launched on November 23, 1941. Liberty ships were 441 feet 6 inches long with a beam of 57 feet and a draft of 27 feet 9 inches, displacing 14,245 tons. During the war, American shipyards built 2,710 Liberty ships. Laden with three million silver Saudi one-riyal coins minted in the United States, John Barry was steaming for Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, when she was torpedoed by U-859 approximately 115 miles off the coast of Oman. The wreck settled approximately 8,500 feet below the surface, practically guaranteeing it a safe final resting place.

In 1989, a consortium headed by Sheikh Ahmed Farid al Aulaqi, Brian Shoemaker, and Jay Fiondella was granted salvage rights to the former American steamship. Together, the men formed the John Barry Group to recover the freighter’s cargo. In October 1994, the recovery effort began, with more than seventeen tons of silver being brought to the surface.

The most recent World War II treasure ship to give up her bounty of precious metals is the 412-foot-long steamship SS Gairsoppa. In December 1940, Gairsoppa departed Calcutta, India, bound for the United Kingdom. Having crossed the Indian Ocean, Gairsoppa rounded the Cape of Good Hope and traveled north to Freetown, Sierra Leone. There she joined convoy SL-64 for the journey to Liverpool, England, on January 31, 1941.

Low on fuel and traveling in worsening weather conditions, Gairsoppa left the convoy to stop at Galway, Ireland, to replenish its stocks of coal before continuing on—without the protection of the convoy’s escorts. Traveling alone, Gairsoppa crossed paths with U-101, which sent four torpedoes toward the steamer. One found its mark, hitting the ship in the No. 2 hold. Of the eighty-five men on board, only one survived, coming ashore after thirteen days in a lifeboat.

Sixty-nine years later, the United Kingdom Department for Transport put the recovery of Gairsoppa’s cargo up for bid. Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. of Tampa, Florida, won the salvage rights to recover Gairsoppa’s silver on an eighty-twenty split basis with Odyssey Marine taking all of the risk but, if successful, claiming 80 percent of the recovered silver.

After extensive research and a number of exploratory dives, Odyssey Marine found SS Gairsoppa more than three hundred miles off the coast of Ireland and more than 14,100 feet below the surface. Recovery operations began on May 31, 2012, with 1,218 silver bars—equaling approximately forty-eight tons—recovered during that season. The following year, the Odyssey Marine team recovered another 1,574 bars, weighing more than sixty-one tons. In total, the team brought up nearly 110 tons of silver, which is believed to be 99 percent of the amount listed on Gairsoppa’s manifest. Having monetized most of the silver recovered, Odyssey Marine Exploration and the UK government are splitting nearly $80 million.

In a published interview, Odyssey Marine president Mark Gordon said his company has a list of more than one hundred ships that are known to have cargoes valued in excess of $50 million each sitting on the bottom of the sea. There’s still a lot to be found, and as technology improves, more will